King of Kings (Rey de Reyes)

This email is from December 26, 2016

Honestly had a superrrr great week out here in Waller. A lot of great things happened and we saw some Christmas milagros (miracles).

The District with Christmas Tree

On Wednesday we had our mission Christmas conference and it was a blast. President Mortensen gave an inspired training on shepherds that blew my mind. He walked us through the story of the nativity in the Bible and had us call out the attributes of the shepherds. There were a lot, but mostly talked about how we are like shepherds and shepherds lead sheep to water. So helping people progress towards baptism is symbolic of shepherding. He also shared a diagram that I will attach below that shows how critical it is to help people understand the covenants that they have made or are planning to make with God. He also showed us how we finished the year with 550 baptisms as a mission, which was 50 short of our goal but still a huge improvement compared to the last few years. But other than that we watched The Nativity, ate good food, and played some fun games.

The Mission at Christmas Conference

Christmas Conference games

New socks for Christmas!

Thursday we got a text from the Benedicts, a senior missionary couple serving in the branch saying that they set a baptismal date with the 3 Hernandez kids for January 18th! So that puts us at 4 heading into January with potential to set 2 more with Enrique and Deseret. Some really great things are happening in Waller.

On Saturday we visited a lot of people and ate Christmas Eve dinner with the Contreras family.

Sunday, I was able to talk to my family and it was good to see them. We visited a lot of people and got fed barbecue by a really nice couple when we were out knocking doors. All in all it was a good Christmas and I am so grateful for the opportunity I have to serve our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ full time for 2 years. I hit 11 months tomorrow and I am striving to give my all every single day so that I can look back on these 2 years with no regrets.

Merry Christmas!

Elder Josh Barrus